Dianne Feinstein (Wikipedia)
Senator Dianne Feinstein returned to Washington on Tuesday, promising that she is ready to get back to work after spending the last three months recuperating from an unspecified illness back home in the San Francisco Bay area. During her absence, many Democrats were not happy about it, and some called for her to retire early before her term ends at the end of 2024.
Specifically, her fellow Democrats were bothered about their inability to push through the confirmation of many of President Joe Biden’s appointees to the Federal bench.
On that matter, Dianne Feinstein released a statement saying there was no “slowdown” as people had alleged and that, “The Senate continues to swiftly confirm highly qualified individuals to the federal judiciary, including seven more judicial nominees who were confirmed this week.”
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“I’m confident that when I return to the Senate, we will be able to move the remaining qualified nominees out of committee quickly and to the Senate floor for a vote,” Feinstein declared.
But the other day Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and chairman of the Judiciary Committee stated, “The bottom line is, the business of the committee and the Senate is affected by her absence.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), however, is glad to see Dianne Feinstein return, saying in a statement, “I’m glad that my friend Dianne is back in the Senate and ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work. After talking with her multiple times over the past few weeks, it’s clear she’s back where she wants to be and ready to deliver for California.”
Dianne Feinstein is 89 years old and has been a senator for more than 30 years. She will not seek reelection in 2024, after announcing her retirement from the Senate in February. When she announced her decision to step down, Feinstein explained, “There are times for all things under the sun and I think that will be the right time.”
But Feinstein also promised to continue to work on behalf of her state saying she intended to, “accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends,” she said in a statement.”
Unfortunately, as many of her fellow Democrats have complained, Dianne Feinstein has missed a lot of time from the US Senate in recent months, hurting her party’s control in the body where it holds a slim majority of 51 out of 100 seats.
Dianne Feinstein was first elected to the Senate in 1992 in a by-election to fill an open seat. She won reelection to a sixth term in 2018. Before that, Feinstein served as Mayor of San Francisco.
There have been concerns that Dianne Feinstein is too old to stay on in her role as a senator for some time now and many had hoped she would even retire early and not finish her term. Her forgetfulness and mistakes were often reported on over the years. Some of her Senate colleagues even reportedly said that they need to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein on more than one occasion and her aids have been said to need to constantly remind her of where she is and what is going on around her.
